This is a guide aimed at Median XL beginners or players who are new to the Bowazon. I dislike “guides” that serve as gear lists, or showcases of SSSU shared stashes, or those that assume owning a complete set before attempting easy/mid-game Ubers. As such, the focus will be on starting untwinked, progressing naturally through the game and teaching you how to approach and succeed at the Uberquests. Experienced players, who are interested in soloing the tougher bosses with their Amazon, are encouraged to skip to the latter Uberquest sections.

The basis for this guide is an Amazon I played on the XV ladder, solo, untwinked and self-found. All of the uberquest strategies and gear/skill recommendations are my own and in no way do I claim they are the only successful approach to the encounters or the character.

Introduction

The bow wielding Amazon is my favourite ranged character in Median XL. It is a high intensity damage dealer that prefers a good offence as its form of defence. We will forego any protection against physical melee and ranged attacks in order to dish out huge amounts of rainbow damage to our enemies, killing them before they can harm us. A quick summary of the character:

Pros :Extremely high damage output and low gear dependency. Involved playstyle – we have to kite and dodge enemies and their attacks, and utilise our reflexes throughout the game. Viable as both a farming character and a boss killer.

Cons: We are never “safe”. Even in full endgame gear monsters can shred you if you get too close or ignore certain damaging attacks, aka no facerolling. Playstyle consists of spamming two attack skills, a support skill and occasionally using a debuff against bosses. It is not the most “mechanically” involved. If you prefer to skill switch more or micro manage short term buffs I suggest playing a caster or a Paladin.

Skills

Sun Strike: deals 3/2 weapon damage, converts all physical to fire damage and adds flat fire damage per arrow. For hard skill points we get 0.6 yards to Wyrmshot seek range and every 4 points put into this grant an extra arrow. This skill does incredible damage to non-fire immune targets who are standing against walls. By clicking closer or further away from your character with it you can affect the spread of the volley. We use this skill for the Level Challenge 0 and some heroic bosses, otherwise mainly skilled for the Wyrmshot synergy.

Barrage: deals 5/4 weapon damage and adds flat magic damage to each arrow. Does not give any bonuses for hard skill points, but the amount of magic damage and number of arrows per attack increase with soft skill points. Early game, before we have a source of + skills on gear and charms, when the flat magic damage is relevant we put points in this skill to ease the levelling process. Late game this skill is not worth more than one point. This is our highest damage ability against enemies on our screen and our boss killer skill, because it allows us to deal incredible damage while staying mobile.

Phalanx: a spell which summons Amazon archers in a straight line, who deal 3/2 of your weapon damage. Hard skill points reduce the timer on this skill, completely eliminating it with 15 skill points invested. This is an awesome support skill, whose efficiency depends in which direction your character is moving. There are 8 directions of movement possible in the Diablo 2 engine.

Phalanx is at its best when you are travelling south-east and to a lesser extent south, because the archer lines cover your path and sides completely. This is the only time it can also be used as a single target attack, despite the slow casting animation when compared to Barrage or Wyrmshot. It also has acceptable efficiency when moving north-west and north. You can lay archer lines at the edge of your screen to support your Barrage/Wyrmshot damage. Phalanx is at its worst when moving in the remaining four directions (south-west, east, west and north-east) because the archers cover the smallest area of your path with arrows per cast. Therefore in these cases this skill is best used to restrict enemy movement at key chokepoints such as doors or narrow corridors, or to deal single target damage if fighting a boss you cannot afford to kite with Barrage.

Early game the skill point requirement for timer removal and the high mana cost prohibit us from using this skill to its full potential. Once we are in the mid-game section with several charms and better gear this skill starts to shine.

Dragonlore: adds flat maximum cold, fire and lightning damage to your attacks. The growth in damage per hard skill point improves by 15%, so this is one skill we definitely want to put as many points in as possible in order to get the most damage. The requirement to already have a source is negligible as at lvl 50 we get the Sunstone of the Elements from the Level Challenge 1 which grants a source of the three elements.

Wyrmshot: shoots out a drake which auto targets your enemies, using your attack speed, with bolts dealing 3/4 weapon damage. Every two hard points invested into this skill increase the number of targets by 1, up from a base of 3. Simple math tells us that using this skill on anything less than 10 targets is a waste of damage potential, because even going from 9-10 targets grants us approximately 11% more damage in total. I recommend spending 18 points here at all times, for 12 targets, as the total damage increase afterwards becomes too small for my liking and it is not always the case that you will shoot packs of more than 12 enemies. If you are specialising in farming certain areas for long periods of time, even up to 15 targets can be useful.

Wild and Free: a passive which grants faster hit recovery per soft point and increased character velocity per hard point, both with diminishing returns. Early game with points to spare it is worth putting a decent amount here in order to make yourself more mobile and to speed up the levelling process. The FHR amount granted end game even from a single point is what allows us to easily reach our maximum get hit animation breakpoint.

Summon Fire Elementals: a one point wonder for most of the game. Grants us meat shields when we need them, nothing more nothing less.

Balance: adds flat defence, with increasing effectiveness per hard point. Our skill set grants us no TCD bonus and furthermore we wish to optimise our offensive capabilities with Ecstatic frenzy. Therefore only 1 point here as a pre-requisite.

Ecstatic Frenzy: a buff, which grants 50% skill based IAS, increased velocity and high amounts of magic damage with improving efficiency per level. As a downside it sets your defence to 0, meaning that all ranged and melee attackers will have a 95% chance to hit us at all times. Consequently there is no point to walking with this character, simply switch to running for the added velocity. We want to max this skill out in order to get the highest magic damage possible.

Defensive harmony: slows attackers which manage to strike you and grants a bonus chance to have an uninterruptible attack. Every hard skill point grants an additional 2% slow to your attackers, while the UA bonus increases from soft points too. Early game with points to spare and while learning the character we want to heavily invest into this skill, because if we make a mistake it allows us to more easily recover and nearly no monsters deal enough damage to kill you in a single hit. Late game we need these points to enhance our offensive capabilities and we are already used to the Bowazon play style so we leave this at 1 in order to get the UA chance increase.

Spellbind: our Ennead Challenge reward skill. For some reason this amazing skill is heavily underestimated and underused by most Amazon players. Something I never quite understood. If you have played a necromancer in cLoD think of this as a Decrepify AND Amplify Damage with one cast. We will use this liberally in boss encounters for the damage buff, enemy damage debuff and enemy slow to drastically improve our survivability and offensive output. 1pt is enough as the skill gives no bonuses for hard points invested, and the duration increase from soft points is sufficient.

War Spirit: our Black Road Challenge reward skill. Every two seconds, if an enemy is near you it fires off a spike nova dealing 3/4 weapon damage. It also adds crushing blow to your attacks, increasing by 2% per hard point. The nova itself is a nice way to trigger our on striking procs. The crushing blow is not that useful to us because as a ranged damage dealer it only decreseas enemy health by 1/16 and we already have enough flat magic and elemental and physical damage to deal significantly more than that fraction per hit. Allocate your left over points to this skill.

Paragon: our Uber skill, granted to us at level 90. This gives us a flat vitality bonus for every gem we have socketed in our gear. We take this skill as the best defensive option, as it will give us a huge life pool with just a single point invested. It synergyses well with perfect gems which increase your maximum resistances, because a high life pool combined with high maximum resistances will make you tankier than most other characters in the game against spells.

LevellingTips

This section assumes that you have already levelled a character to 120 before, and as such it is rather brief. If this is your first ever MXL character and If at any point you are unsure of the cube recipe, or item name, or anything else I am referring to, be sure to look them up in the appropriate sections of our Documentation.

Level Challenge 0: Make sure to put two points in Sun Strike and two points in Wild and Free, this will help you in dodging the death spiral and taking down Volrath and his traps. We are not amazing Volrath farmers, so simply take any charm with 9 or 10 to all attributes and move on to the den of evil.

From level 6 up to and including 60 keep putting points into Barrage every time the cap is raised. This is because the added extra arrows and flat magic damage are highly relevant in the early game as our other damage sources are low.

Regarding your attribute placements this early on, I suggest you do the following. First put all points into Dexterity until you have 168 (the dex requirement for our tier 3 unique stag bow). Then put all points in strength until you have 128 (str requirement for our tier 3 unique splint mail). Next keep putting points into dexterity until you reach 330 (TU5 stag bow). After this point you will add 15x [+2 strength] MOs to your honorific boots (see early game gear section) and put points in strength until you have 270. The final dex and str breakpoints are 457 and 404 (TU6 heavy belt) respectively. Afterwards keep putting all points into dexterity unless you need more strength for sacred uniques you find.

When you get to Tristram, I suggest farming the Gift Box until you get at least the Tier 1 unique Stag Bow and Cerveillere. Farm for a Tier 2 bow if you have time as that will save you some more farming time later.

Progress through act 1 by using exclusively Barrage. At level 18 you will get access to Ecstatic Frenzy and Dragonlore which will considerably boost your dps. Note that using EF will set your defence to zero. We will be using this buff throughout the game so I feel like it is a good idea to level with it in order to get acquainted with the gameplay and the requirement to kite and doge melee attackers and projectiles. At the start of Act 2 before you venture into the sewers, make sure to create your honorific boots and MO them with all resistance orbs up to your character level. If you need gold you can farm the Rocky Waste and Dry Hills Grubbers or simply purchase throwing weapons from Farsi, socket them with any rune and sell them back to her.

Once you get to Mephisto in Act 3, it is a good idea to farm him for some arcane crystals in order to be able to upgrade your Bow to Tier 3 and make yourself a Tier 3 Jitan’s Kamon unique splint mail.

Keep following the early game build by putting points into skills labelled as “smax” as soon as the cap is raised every 6 levels.

Level Challenge 1: This one is tough for us because our Wyrmshot and Sunstrike levels do not currently allow us to snipe fellow Amazons before they are able to snipe us. I advise keeping a TP open at all times and not rushing. Treat it as an exercise to practice your dodging abilities. Once you get to the bosses make sure to keep your distance and dodge their shots as they can easily one shot you at this point. After you kill each priestess, cube your sunstone of the elements with the cold/fire/ice sunstones they drop to complete your charm reward.

Afterwards keep progressing through Hatred and kill Baal. Once we get to Terror make sure to start MO-ing your weapon for Enhanced Damage and life after enemy kill and armours for minus enemy fire/light/cold resistances. For more details, scroll down to the Early Game Stats, Skills & Gear section. Be careful not to go over your character level as this will render the item unusable and is irreversible. Make sure to also keep your bow and chest at the highest possible tier that your attributes allow you to equip.

Once you are mid way through Terror Wyrmshot will begin to become more and more useful, ending up as your main attack skill allowing you to snipe monsters off screen. This is extremely important while we are undergeared. Thus your playstile at this point will be scouting & offscreening with Wyrmshot and killing monsters that get close and bosses with Barrage and Spellbind.

On Terror flawless and perfect gems will start to drop. Collect perfect rubies and socket them into your bow for life after each kill. As we have plenty of damage to demolish everything, getting more sustain and survivability is of a higher priority. To that extent we will be socketing Perfect Onyxes/Bloodstones/Turquoises and Ambers into our armour pieces in equal quantities to raise our maximum resistances and protect ourselves from elemental damage.

When you get to Tristram, be sure to kill Griswold for his Special Box and cube it with an oil of disjunction to get some high runes. This will enable you to make the Jah runeword in your helm and the Pul runeword in your gloves if you haven’t already. Collect or gamble rare jewels at this point and reroll them with oils of renewal until they spawn with magic find. Use them to fill out the remaining sockets in those two runeword pieces.

When you get to, or slightly before, level 80 make sure to go back to Hatred in order to complete the Ennead Challenge. Simply clear the skeletons at the entrance and then run to the necromancer in the north-east corner and kill him enough times to get your class charm – the Sacred Sunstone. I suggest deciding which route to take based on which one has the least amount of archers. If you get the other level layout, leave the game to reset the map (if playing on single player this requires you to host a TCP/IP game and then S&E and go back to single player). Collect two rare rings and a rare amulet either from K3KBA or Act2 Terror and reroll them with oils of renewal until you get ones matching the early game gear section. MO them with minus enemy resistances and magic find. The rings can alternatively be collected from A5 normal.

Level challenge 2: at or before level 90, make yourself a book of summoning and summon Tal Rasha and his posse outside of the Claw Viper temple. Presummon your fire elementals and spam Barrage at the location before you do. Then run away and kill the minions off screen with Wyrmshot. Be sure to dodge their spells as they are lethal. Once only the boss is left, keep spamming fire elementals around him to tank him and kill him with Barrage or Wyrmshot. Cube your class charm with any perfect gem afterwards.

From here on until Destruction, keep following the early game stat & skill plans and upgrading/creating the items in the early game build. Make sure to MO them appropriately – enhanced damage/life after each kill/maximum damage on the weapon; minus enemy resistances/magic find/75% FHR on the armours; honorific boots as shown in the gear plan. In addition, as you go through Terror difficulty make sure to do all the minigames listed in the Minigames section below, apart from the Act Boss Tokens minigame which we will finish on Destruction.

Once you get to Destruction you will be around level 115. Make sure that your items are MOd to the maximum, as this will help you with the Basic uberquests and with farming gear. Here is where all our concentrated effort of MO-ing our gear for MF will pay off as it will allow you to find decent gear as you go along with the smallest amount of farming (to enable you to make the jump from Basic to Easy Ubers). Now you are ready to move through Destruction and do some Basic Ubers on the way!

EarlyGameStats,Skills&Gear

STATS:Enough strength to equip gear and the rest into dexterity. For more details, take a look at the above section.

You will be lucky if you have this drop. More than likely you will have to create it with the unique creation recipe, by cubing any quiver with two arcane crystals and an oil of enhancement. We will MO this with minus enemy fire/cold/lightning resistances and magic find.

Get the TU Cervelliere from the gift box and use it until you can obtain a high level rune from the special box, that drops from Griswold in Terror.

The stats on the runeword are simply awesome for its level requirement. This will give us huge elemental damage, crushing blow, all resistances and flat dexterity to boot to help with equipping our bow. The only downside is that this is a runeword and so we miss out on some vitality from Paragon. Otherwise this helm has better stats than most sacred uniques. MO it with minus enemy resistances, resists and magic find. Socket with magic find jewels.

The modifiers and stat budget on this piece are simply incredible for it being a tiered unique. The flat elemental damage and guard tower procs will carry our dps early game, the singularity proc will aid corpse recovery and damage reduction is extremely important as every physical attack against us is a guaranteed hit. MO it with FHR, minus enemy resistances and all resists.

To begin with keep all apples you find in act 1 and sell them when you get to act 2. Then create a honorific pair of gloves and orb them with all resistances to the level cap and keep applying the other stats as you level up.

A nifty proc and some all skills to boost our damage. The maximum fire resistance is helpful for some early game uberquests too. Overall not too impressive, and barely worth the loss in vitality from Paragon, but this is a slot with no extremely nice early game options so this will have to do. Socket with mf jewels and MO with minus enemy resistances, skeleton reanimates and magic find.

This belt has a nice combination of both offensive and defensive stats. Because the midgame / endgame options for this slot are very rare you will be using this bad boy for a while. MO it with some minus enemy resistance, FHR and all resistance.

Crafted honorific boots with the above stats. Note that in the picture mine only have 14% enemy pierce instead of 15. This is because I got tired of waiting for boots to spawn in the vendors and made mine with heavy boots as a base instead.

Use a rare amulet dropped in A3 Terror as a base and reroll it with oils of renewal until you get at least the necessary stats. If you have time and patience go for some extra desirable stats too. MO with elemental pierce.

WEAPON SWITCH: use the TU6 Mace - Koth's lesson and any 6 socketed shield, both full of Nih runes. Weapon switch after firing some Wyrmshots into a pack to get a better Bloodlust buff.

Minigames

Witch Queen: MO a piece of jewellery with a Shredder summon. Then go to the bottom level in the countess tower. Use said summon near witches to get them to pounce it and thereby moving them out of your way. Repeat this process to clear a path to the Countess' chamber from witches. Then simply shoot a few Wyrmshots into her room, making sure to dodge the deathstrike under your feet. Once that is done and you have the swirlies, cube your class charm with an Eth rune.

Crowned: Find a witch in the Rocky Waste and lure her outside of town with your trusty Shredder summon. Then summon a Shredder inside its pounce range. If you dont see the sparkles go into town, run back to the palace and then go back out to rocky waste - this resets the witch. Keep trying until your shredder gets the sparkle it might take a dozen trys or so. After it does, summon another shredder and then run in to cube your charm with a Thul rune while the Witch's pounce is on cooldown.

Mirror Mirror: Do a few Baal runs in Terror, without zerging him down with Barrage. Keep spamming fire elementals on top of him, which will lead him to produce more adds. Once there is a large bunch kill them off with Wyrmshot and go back to spamming fire elementals. When you get the swirlies TP to town and cube your class charm with a Lem rune. This is easier if you do it in early game gear, but it still might take a couple of runs.

Veteran Tokens: You can find these mobs in: Act 1 Jail Levels; Act 2 Canyon of the Magi; Act 3 Travincal and Durance of Hate; Act 4 River of Flame; Act 5 Worldstone Keep. Note that they have a buff during which they gain high amounts of avoid making them unkillable. So when they turn transparent drop back and wait for it to expire. After you have collected a token from each act cube them with your class charm for a bonus.

Act Boss Tokens: Every boss drops their respective token on Terror and Destruction. You have to collect one from each boss and in addition two more from the same boss and cube them together to make a skill point token, which you can eat a maximum of 3 of. I suggest for the repeating boss token that you kill Diablo on Destruction as he is a part of our early game farming area and drops at least one sacred unique very often. For example: Dogma of Suffering + Dogma of Pain + Dogma of Hatred + 3x Dogma of Terror + Dogma of Destruction = Skill Point Token.

BasicUberquests

These are doable as soon as you reach them. So take a few detours while going through Destruction to obtain some charms. At the bottom of some uberquests there is a note: [Gear Used: *] for example. If you look up section A3 in the appendix it will show you the exact gear setup I was using to defeat all bosses, and the note signifies when a new piece of gear was acquired.

1. THE BUTCHER: Summon a few fire elementals and then summon the butcher. While hitting your elementals, he will occasionally spawn a pentagram. Once that happens blink behind it so that your summons will come with you and the Butcher will follow into it. Then hit him with Barrage. Repeat a few times until he is dead.

2. INFERNAL MACHINE: Presummon your fire elementals before entering. Stay next to the torch near the entrance of the dungeon and spam Wyrmshot. Occasionally when striking the machine it will retaliate with deathstrike, so move when you see it under your feet. Wyrmshot will slay all elites in no time, but the boss might take some time depending on what random resistances he spawned with. Just play it safe, hold your position dodging deathstrikes and Wyrmshot until it is dead.

3. CREATURE OF FLAME: Enter the dungeon and clear out the familiar and all the Astral Guardians, while dodging the Creature’s energy beam. Once only it is left, go to a sheltered spot from its attacks and use dark summoning to spawn an Astral Guardian next to yourself. It will hit you and grant you the invulnerability buff (you will hear a distinct sound when this happens). While buffed run to the Creature and spam Barrage on its face. After a few seconds retreat to the dark summoned guardian to obtain the buff again. Rinse and repeat. Later on you should come back here and try to farm a 5% life leech charm.

4. BINDING OF BAAL: Exactly the same as LC2. If you want to do it while tanking their attacks, craft a TU6 pair of honorific gloves and boots, MO them up to 155 fire/cold/lightning resistance and socket with perfect ambers/onyxes/bloodstones.

5. DEATH PROJECTOR: As you enter the proving grounds, turn immediately to your right down the narrow corridor leading north. Follow this corridor and you will eventually enter the large room where the Death Projector and the Mechanics are. Hang out there for a moment to get the Mechanics to follow you and then lure them into the long passage, while being careful to avoid the laser. Once they are at the passage, lose them there, go back to the entrance and then move to your left. Before going to the Projector’s room through that way, make sure to put a TP down in case you need to recover your corpse. Then go to the projector and make sure you are comfortable dodging its death beam – it always spawns from the south-east – exactly like LC0.

Once you are, slowly approach the narrow passage where you lured the mechanics in order to attract one or as few as possible back to the projector. Once you do this it will lose its immunities and be killable. Spellbind it and kill it. Note that it has a chance to trigger an alternative direction beam when struck sometimes. If this happens, dodge while blinking across the beam, take a TP to town or simply recover your corpse. All options are easy.

6. ISLAND OF THE SUNLESS SEA: We have plenty of damage to kill everything in our way here. The only thing you have to be wary of are the magic damage missiles, that look like golden apparitions, fired off by the revellers in your general direction. Dodge these as they deal high amounts of magic damage. The first boss, Malic, fires slow moving homing projectiles at you which will kill you on impact. It is therefore infeasible to rush him down with Barrage as you will die. Simply keep your distance and kill him slowly with Wyrmshot. The second boss, Lucion, grants everyone else around him an invulnerability aura. Once you get to the invulnerable mobs, lure them a few at a time with Wyrmshot out of range of the aura and kill them. Eventually Lucion will come. Spellbind and kill him with Barrage, but be careful not to get meleed as he has a strong poison attack.

7. ASSAULT ON MT. ARREAT: Make sure to have fire elementals summoned, before you start this one. This is similar to the Binding of Baal except that all enemies have physical attacks instead of spells. Our damage here will be insane thanks to the Diablo morph which grants you a 4frame attack animation. Kill all minions with Wyrmshot off screen first, then Spellbind and kill Koth with Barrage. Be careful not to tank their thrown axes as they do inflict significant damage.

8. BAAL: make sure to grant one of your rings the RIP modifier by cubing it with a catalyst of Destruction and an arcane crystal. Then keep Baal spellbound and kite him with Barrage. This will be your routine against all melee based bosses. Avoid running into the lights that Shardspawn leave on death as running through two in succession will kill you. Do not use summons here also as this will cause more Shardspawn to appear and potentially overwhelm you. [Gear Used: *]

EarlyGameFarming

River of Flame runs: Starting from the City of the Damned WP, clearing the whole river of flame and chaos sanctuary which are loaded with elites. Then killing Diablo.

► Sample run 5set 10TU 1SU

Baal runs: remember to reequip RIP modifier before boss.

Tran Athulua: extremely fast on Terror but can only drop sets and no sacred uniques. Slow going on Destruction for now but still doable.

As you go along, make sure to disenchant all tiered uniques into arcane crystals in order to attempt to make the Hanabigami quiver (see midgame gear section below for more information). All sets which are not useful to you can also be transmuted with a catalyst of learning to give you a Signet of Learning. Keep doing this until you have consumed the maximum of 500.

EasyUberquests

These are doable with a few midgame upgrades or any decent sacred unique bow you come across. To see which are the decent bows, take a look at section A2 of the appendix. Note that the order in which all the Uberquests are listed is the one in which I did them with my Amazon. Within certain tiers bosses can be interchanged.

9. AKARAT: Go outside the entrance to the Kabraxis uberquest. Presummon your elementals, spam Barrage and summon the boss. As soon as you do run directly down towards the entrance of Rathma Square in order to avoid the hammers flying at your face. Once you are out of their range spam 4-5 Wyrmshots, which will clear the minions and debuff the boss. Then run in avoiding any residual hammers and Barrage Akarat to death. Return here later to farm him for his very important trophy.

10. LEGACY OF BLOOD: Replace your gems with perfect bloodstones until you have 95% fire resistance to protect yourself from golems’ cataclysm on death (doesn’t mean you should stand still when they die however). Then summon elementals, spam Barrage and summon Bartuc. Once most of the elementals die go downstairs to the Tower Level 1. There resummon your elementals, open a TP just in case and go back up. When you do instantly Spellbind Bartuc. This makes him harmless. From here simply keep Spellbind up and kill him with Barrage.

11. LORD ALDRIC JITAN: Summon him inside the temple with all elementals and a spammed Barrage like usual. Then run to the entrance, cast 4-5 Wyrmshots and retreat. Lure out remaining minions one by one. When only Jitan is left keep resummonning your elementals and re-entering through red portal until he walks in melee range of them without casting fortress. That is your queue to go in melee range, Spellbind and follow up with Barrage for the kill.

12. AZMODAN: I am putting him in the easy section since he actually is a pain in the arse no matter the gear level and I rather get him out of the way early as the charm is very useful. Go in the reliquary and take a second to notice if there are visible enemies at either of the doors, to your left or right. If there are, then take the other one. If upon entering you get slowed by unseelie curse then the map density is a pain in the arse – remake game. Once you enter the bigger room hopefully there are no or very few enemies there. If that is the case then move slightly south to get vision of the central chamber where Azmodan is. This will cause him to walk over to you. If however the room is swarming with enemies (more often the case), Spellbind them to slow them and then keep running along the outer corners of the dungeon in the hopes that you will see enemies not covered by the invulnerability aura. If this happens then kill them and slowly advance clearing out the remaining elites. If not you are probably dead by now. Try again. Don’t get discouraged - it takes about 10 attempts on average to roll a nice low density map that we can complete being this undergeared.

13. KHALIMGRAD: Blink to nearest avatar, across the wall and kill it with Barrage. If it is not dead by the time your timer lockout expires then use Spellbind.

14. TRAN ATHULUA: We have enough damage to easily clear out the sisterhood and there are plenty of open spaces for Wyrsmhot to shine so what is the problem? Arrowside. Until in endgame gear even the tiniest collision with the arrows from the trap means instant death for you. Advance slowly shooting off 4-5 Wyrms before moving back (in corridors) or sideways in open hallways to avoid Arrowside. The more reanimates you have here the easier everything becomes. Drops here are kind of mediocre so simply clear the trio of bosses a few times to get your charm and come back to farm for the very important trophy later when you have more damage and hp. If you wish to tryhard for the trophy right now, then be sure to have MO’d 15% reanimate as skeleton in at least 3 pieces of armour and it should be very easy.[Gear Used: 2*]

15. BLACK ROAD CHALLENGE: Terror Fauzt is easy for us as Wyrmshot here is godly. A useful tip is to never leave your lightning arena. Spam Wyrmshot constanly moving from edge to edge of your lightning arenas and you will have no problems. If you are unsure of the locations of the bosses, take a look at the uberquest maps in the LFAQ section of the Documentation. I suggest you leave the gamma boss for last as this is the only potentially tricky area if there are a lot of mobs spawned there. Presummon elementals, blink and kite with Barrage. All other required quests we have already achieved in Destruction so they should be easy. For trial of blood use the luring tactic; be careful when you get to the bosses not to accidentally kill them with Wyrmshot. Once you near their position do not spam it but shoot single birdies to draw them out.

► Trial of blood map, courtesy of aahz

16. BULL PRINCE RODEO: After summoning him run in a wide circle around a square section to protect yourself from the cows. After he blinks on you, Spellbind if it is off cooldown, run half a screen away and keep spamming Barrage. Once he is under Spellbind the only thing that can kill you are the cows, so make sure to keep moving. He dies rather quickly. Make sure to farm yourself a nice charm: combined stats of str + dex > 50 OR a nice reanimate.

► BPR Route example

17. JUDGEMENT DAY: First of all clear out the Cathedral, then create a TP behind the column near the Catacombs entrance. Go back to the Inner Cloister, create and equp the Lai RW sceptre and a honorific shield MOd with minion life and minion res and spawn your 20 elementals. Summon Uldyssian and his pack, run a bit back and keep spamming elementals. When an avatar spawns your first job is to go and stand somewhere near the wp and die. Then enter through the tp you made and make a new one. Run towards the cathedral entrance. Edyrems will blink to you and gib you. Then repeat this process another 2 times until all edyrems are somewhere near the catacombs entrance. Afterwards take the wp pick up your body and go to town. Rebuff, resummon, enter inner cloister, Spellbind avatar and kill with Barrage.

18. K3KBA: Upon entering check if you are in the new map. If this is the case remake the game – there are no unshielded necros on this one and we are not tanky enough to clear easily in reasonable time. On the old map clear out the starting area and the “tunnel” on the right, between the house and the northern map edge, that leads through to the unshielded necro. Simply run over there and Spellbind + kill with Barrage. His spells do no damage as we have a very high poison resist. The only thing to pay attention to while dodging the skellies on your way are the archer projectiles – spells do no damage and melee skellies are slow and clunky. So make sure to do your best in dodging those arrows and you will get your charm in no time.

Note that as you approach endgame gear you can leave War Spirit at 1pt and switch your leftovers to Paragon for more hp. This is because as our gear and damage improves, the less and less we need crushing blow.

Weapon switch and prebuff yourself with Bloodlust, Ecstatic Frenzy, Lightning Arena and War Spirit. When you engage some mobs, weapon switch after shooting a few Wyrmshots or laying some Phalanxes to replace your innate Bloodlust with a better one from Koth's Lesson.

Scout and offscreen mobs with Wyrmshot. Kill enemies on your screen and bosses with Barrage. Use Phalanx to supplement your damage with both these skills. Debuff bosses with Spellbind. For more specific skill usage information, check the respective section among the Uberquest tutorials.

GEAR:

There are two approaches to gearing in the midgame. The first is to collect the Pantheon set and use it in conjunction with off pieces from the early game section. The second approach is to attempt ubers and farm as you go using whichever sacred unique pieces drop.

The advantage of the first method is that if you farm up the whole set and then approach the Tricky Uberquests section the difficulty curve will be much smoother. However you are committing to farming the early game farming spots until you collect all Pantheon pieces, which might take awhile by yourself. The second method is for players who do not enjoy farming as much (like me) and would rather progress at the Uberquests while farming occasionally on the side. Obviously taking this route will mean that you will have a harder time with the following Uberquests. As I mentioned before, after uberquests where I had a change in my gear you will see a note so you can track how my character's gear progressed over time.

One of the best sets in the game, it is extremely potent and will allow you to glide through the Tricky uberquests once you have practised them a bit. Once you have the completed set, put Wolf Stance on your right mouse button and rebind your main attacks: Wyrmshot and Barrage on the left skill button. As far as mystic orbs are concerned one thing that this set lacks is a meatshield reanimate. So put 20 orbs of reanimate as skeleton and fill the remaining space with "damage reduced by 2" or with magic find. For the bow use 10 life leech orbs.

The Hanabigami quiver provides higher dps, when compared to the Locust hive, so you should use it while obtaining charms. All the spare Locust Hives that you rolled with the unique creation recipe should be cubed with Azmodan's heart for a chance of a successful lottery roll, which will grant 100% mf. This will then become your main farming quiver.

As the set in combination with the Sunstone of the Elements and the Six Angel bag already gives 100% elemental pierce, keep your amulet but replace your rings with:

The Hanabigami quiver provides higher dps, when compared to the Locust hive, so you should use it while obtaining charms. All the spare Locust Hives that you rolled with the unique creation recipe should be cubed with Azmodan's heart for a chance of a successful lottery roll, which will grant 100% mf. This will then become your main farming quiver.

The rest of the items are identical to the early game section, with the only difference being that you should replace your worst ring with Assur's Bane and craft + bless yourself a decent pair of gloves with an Abandoned Shrine. If you wish to go the extra mile, keep rolling for some of the optional stats with the Burning Veil proc being the best.

Require midgame gear set or experience with the character. Again the numbers simply show the order in which I did them, but some are interchangeable.

19. FAUZTINVILLE: Doable with mid gear set or before, but the going is slow. Good thing for us is we only need 1 taha rune and maybe 1 ghal (in case you get unlucky with weapon rng like me). So a full clear, if you are lucky or two if not should be enough. Same strategy as brc. Reanimates and kill speed are the two most important parameters here. Necrobots are the only mobs that are hard to kill for us, try to dodge their shots and offscreen as much as possible) Scout ahead with Wyrmshot and lay down protective archer Phalanxes. Make sure to put the first Taha great rune you find into a pair of gloves for the +1 to max skills upgrade.

20. BELIAL: First of all make sure that the Icy Cellar map has a solid middle, somewhere you can run around and dodge Belial’s burning novas, and be shielded from his crucifies (rat swarm erupting under your feet). If it does clear the level. If the boss is already there remake the game, otherwise you won’t be able to control the ratfinks and it will make this a lot more frustrating. If the map is suitable and no boss is spawned, then go to a corner, away from the entrance and start summoning. Once belial pops run like hell towards the middle. Once engaged, the first time he blinks on you, turn a corner instantly as burning nova is incoming. Then stay put and spam Barrage until you see the rat crucify at your feet, then turn the corner. Next blink comes, turn corner and repeat. Whenever you are not running and waiting for the blink/crucify be sure to always spam Barrage. Use a RIP modifier - it makes the fight easier as the boss is only targeting us and this gives us more control and predictability over his movements. It is most important to dodge the burning nova, but if you do get hit instantly TP and try to go to safety. Make sure to farm at least a 400+ hp charm as this is very crucial for our survival as glass cannons.[Gear used: 3*]

21. DUNCRAIG: I suggest you attempt this in mid game gear, as it will make your life easier and the charm itself is not that awesome. Take a look at the map and hunt the minibosses. You should have plenty of damage to kill all mobs here, if it is lacking replace your rings with rings of the five as they drop. Dodging barrels comes with experience, so don’t expect a death free time but since we are used to playing that way we should have an advantage to players who prefer to tank stuff. The only tough spots are teleporting into small areas. Tips: always teleport into a corner where you can see no monster lights. Presummon your fire eles and edyrems and buff them with bloodlust. Your lightning arena procs every 5 seconds. Once it does, count to 4 in your head and then jump. If you get off a perfectly timed stun it is godly. Once you’ve teleported spam Barrage like a madman. If you are not dead, shoot a few supporting Wyrmshots and try to move away from the crowds running with Barrage. If you die make sure to teleport in the opposite corner where there should now be no mobs.

Until in endgame gear, sometimes you will teleport into a mob cluster and get instagibbed before you even fire off a Barrage – it’s the price we pay for our 0 defence. Not much can be done about this for now. Once you have collected the ring, summon some fire eles and go to Assur. Keep running in a wide circle around him without stopping, to avoid his flamestrikes, flamefronts and pounces. Shoot a Barrage now and then to apply OW to him. Hitting him with just a single purify will kill him if he is wounded. If this is your first time using the purify skill and you are having troubles hitting the boss with it, don’t worry it’s normal. Just keep a tp up as even if you die corpse recovery is easy. Try to practice running in a circle around him, maintaining OW with a few Barrages and shooting your purify. You might have to do him several times to get a +2 charm but the practice will be worth it for later. BTW Assur’s bane is a great ring that you will want to use whenever you come to farm here.[Gear used: 4*]

22. RATHMA SQUARE: Presummon elementals and Edyrems, enter and shoot a few Wyrmshots, then teleport to the north, on the left side of the tree in the corner to shield yourself from projectiles if there are many mobs there. Keep spamming Wyrmshots and make your way down the hallway. At the end of it shoot some Wyrmshots to attract Primus, he dies relatively quickly. It is important to keep spamming Wyrmshots as they will kill any respawning crawlers behind you and to lure Primus. Do not go into the centre of the map as he can kill you in melee.

23. CATHEDRAL OF VANITY: Replace all your gems to reach 95 cold resist and 95 lightning resist. Once you enter summon some edyrems. Your goal is to lure Inarius and as many nuns into this starting room as possible. So do a victory lap around the benches of the cathedral, return to the small room and keep spamming edyrems until the boss and some minions are inside. Then blink down, behind the northwest pilar, and run down to the left corner of the cathedral. Open a tp there go to town, resummon your stuff. Then enter again, run around the crystal ball Spellbinding it and spamming Barrage. Depending on its random resistances it might die very quickly or more slowly. If you die the mobs will be around the ball and away from your portal, so resummon and corpse recovery is doable. Once the ball is down kill them all with Barrage. Line of sight the boss on death as he has some proc.

Then do a dark summoning in the cathedral and start running from the “butchers” with Barrage, in order to dodge their attacks and deathstrikes.

24. THE TRIUNE: Before entering, make an Eris runeword in an Amazon bow. We will use the Dominate oskill to help us in the fight with primus’ messenger. With mid-level gear you have enough dmg to clear this level, just stay on your feet and dodge meteors from spires. Kill the cow mini boss to get the book – you will need it in your inventory to kill Arihan. Once you get to the messenger skip him and go inside the palace. Find Arihan – he casts a curse which sets your hp to 1. He only melees so let him chase you to the palace entrance while charming him so he stops cursing you all the time. Once near the entrance, refresh your dominate and approach the messenger. Try to dodge his burning volley of course. He will soon summon bats and teleport you around at random. After you leave the TP vortex make sure not to re-enter it, and find arihan. If he is not in range of the bats, wait for the charm to expire so he attacks you, charm him and lead him closer to the bats being careful of getting oneshot. As soon as arihan spots the bats he will run in to attack them and once they are dead move on to the messenger who is shooting at him. From here on your job is to maintain the charm and the green aura on arihan, by dodging the messenger’s missiles and still being in range of their duel. This process is complicated by the teleporting vortexes occasionally cast, but do not fear as the 20 second duration of dominate makes this relatively easy. Corpse recovery is also easy, as you have the book charm. Just make sure to re-equip it if you die.

25. KABRAXIS: Cover the whole area with Phalanxes once you destroy the pillar, run around dodging his Balefire spells and spamming Barrage. At some point he will cast punisher Barrage nova, when that happens relocate to a different corner of the room and keep repeating the above. Make sure to keep your distance from him as otherwise his Broadside will kill you. That’s basically the fight. You will need to run him a few times to get used to it. Note that the more damage you have the easier this becomes as you clear out the adds faster and there is less chance to get blocked / click on a monster and get balefired. For the elemental bosses stack the respective elemental resist to 95% to avoid deaths. For the physical boss use Wyrmshot and snipe him from a distance – it will take a few mins – once you are in position make sure not to move as those traps they summon on you don’t do any damage if you are right on top of them.[Gear used: 5*]

26. GHOSTS OF OLD BREMMTOWN: This is a *steep* gear check. Only physical damage is incoming, so replace all your gems with amethysts for more damage. Follow lower route. Use Phalanx ahead of you after killing a pack, then move on top of the archers and spam Barrage to make sure you don’t get instakilled if you uncover too many spirits at once. At the end of the narrow corridor spam the large hallway with Phalanxes to clear out the spirits, because if they all jump you it is game over. Always hug the walls so less spirits can attack you at once. Once the dragon is down TP and cube your class charm with a crystal. Don’t get discouraged – even with enough damage it will still take you several tries to get used to how far you can move so you draw large enough packs to enable completion in time, but not large enough so that you get killed.[Gear used: 6*]

27. TORAJA: We are no Toraja farmers, however obtaining the charm upgrade is doable with a little knowledge of how the level and Lillith’s AI works. As you enter, blink over the fence to your north. Then keep spamming edyrems with your RMB and shooting off 2-3 Wyrmshots every now and then to clear the Celebrants who have their shields down. Advance like this to the north very slowly, hugging the fence taking on very few mobs at a time. Eventually you will reach the end of the big enclosure you were in currently. There is a small corridor and Lillith’s room is over the next fence. However there are always plenty of archers there so for us it is impossible to even approach that fence let alone go after Lillith. So we stand back, and keep spamming edyrems at the entrance of the corridor and clearing with Wyrmshot.

After some time you will see that your edyrems will now be tanking Morlus instead of Celebrants, this means you are on the right track keep spamming your stuff. If all your edyrems die and you cannot resummon them in time, take a tp to town to resummon, walk a few steps back and then start edging towards the corridor constantly summoning and Wyrmshotting. Eventually (after 2-3 minutes) Lillith herself will walk from her room to the edyrems to melee them. Be sure to be far away from her so as to not get hit by her abilities. Once you see her simply target her and spam edyrems. She has barely any hp so when she drops her immunities she dies from 1-2 Wyrmshots. Tp home and upgrade your medallion.

28. QUOV TSIN: Make t6 honorific gloves & boots with 120% all resistance and fill the remaining MO space with damage reduced by 2 MOs. To speed up the fight replace your lightning arena amulet with one that gives + skills and at least -20% EFR. If you get your fire pierce to at least 150 you will down him incredibly quickly. Replace all gems in gear to reach 95 cold/fire/lightning resistance (no need poison). This makes you immune to his beam attack. Simply summon him in a faraway room so that you don’t prolong the fight by chasing him in corridors, then proceed to spam Sun Strike on him. He will get hit by all 6 arrows twice, which deal 3/2 100% fire dmg + flat fire each, when near a wall and goes down incredibly quickly. Try to dodge the hives (poison clouds) but if you get hit drink a potion and you will be fine.

► QT honorifics

29. JUDGEMENT DAY UPGRADE: Requires at least mid game gear or better and damage increasing charms from the previous bosses. Regem your gear with Perfect Amethysts, Bow with Jah runes if using unique. Then respec to spirit of vengeance. Max out Spellbind and put 10 points in fire elementals. Go to a corner and spawn SoV + 25 fire elementals with 10k hp + edyrems and stand between your SoV and the Fallen Edyrem, be careful not to go too far away from her or she will follow you causing the mobs to target you instead and kill you. Keep spamming Phalanxes on top of Uldyssian and his dark edyrems. From here it is just luck until both avatars spawn at the same time. Every time an avatar spawns, drink a potion, Spellbind him and keep spamming Phalanx.

30. THE UNFORMED LAND: Preferably in your mid game set to make this as fast as possible, although it can be done earlier. Unfortunately we don’t need any of the elemental runewords (apart from for Natasha’s legacy very end game) so there is little point in farming here unless you intend to sell the skulls and stones. Bowazon is extremely good in this uberlevel because of Wyrmshot. Spam Wyrmshots, dodge projectiles & take cover behind walls is how it is done.

For Terul the only issue is separating the rats from the boss. First do a lap around the outer edges of his level killing the goliaths and clumping up the rats in a big pack. Then lose the rats at one of the bottom corners, by teleporting from the bottom to the middle. Lead the boss to the middle crossing, where you can take cover from his Iron Spiral and Hammer Throw on both sides of the wall there. Then simply kite him with Barrage and keep him slowed with Spellbind, so he stays in your Barrages for longer. It is necessary to maintain open wounds on him as he has a high innate hp regeneration. This is doable solely with the Butcher’s tooth if you have a high enough attack rating. When I did him I was at 50k for an 87% chance to hit. Regarding the Trader’s chest and how to cube it: 10 times with a diamond, then 40 times with an amethyst. Combine the +dex and –str values. An average roll is +50. I would keep it if the result is +80. The int & vit results do not matter.

HardUberquests

Require end game gear and/or have traits to which our character is naturally weak because of our skillset.

31. KINGDOM OF SHADOW: The gear you need for this uber is the TU6 Maiden pike, MOd with enhanced damage and maximum damage, and the Erawan runeword in a Sacred Ancient armour. Make sure to make the base item superior with at least 45% ED and then have it lucky upgraded for more ED. Afterwards MO 10 times with enhanced defence and put the runeword in. Socket the pike with perfect skulls and the chest armour with 2% bonus to vitality jewels. The remaining gear will be your current Bowazon farming set. Make sure to place enough perfect turquoises in the rest of your gear to reach 95% poison resistance.

The skill build is: smaxed Balance, smaxed Lioness, smaxed Paragon, 22 points Takedown, 20 points Wild and free. My defence when I completed this uber was 800k when buffed with takedown and I had 40% DR.

As with Vizjun it is a good idea to explore the level on Terror, so you can find the route to the boss and learn how to dodge citizens without becoming stuck in their midst. This is the most important skill needed to traverse the uber as especially if playing online, getting stuck in the citizens will cause desynch. Do not forget to switch back to walking mode as we actually have good defence and we need it, also make sure to use takedown as you pass by punisher towers and dark wardens for the extra defence and speed buffs.

Once we get to the long narrow bridge leading to Juris Khan, we will be using Jitan’s gate to blink over the packs of mobs, and then making town portals to go to town and wait while our blink comes off cooldown. Once in town, summon 10 edyrems & 10 fire elementals, enter the TP, blink across the pack, run for a bit until you meet the next pack then TP back to town etc. When you get to the boss simply kill him with takedown. Note that because we are using a TU6 weapon this will take some time, but Juris khan has a pitiful chance to hit you. Simply attack him until all your summons are dead then TP, resummon and re-enter. It should take you 4-5 town portals this way. As he is about to die, he will cast a death spiral so make sure to blink away or enter a town portal once he is low on hp. Then simply take your charm and save & exit.

32. YSHARI SANCTUM: A love it or hate it uber. Be sure to set aside some time as it takes a while. I personally enjoy the enemy design and the progressive difficulty and density increase and the labyrinth is amazing. Drops here are actually among the best in the game per mob.

First Stage

Mephisto: from the easiest boss in XIV to the dumbest / most annoying boss in XV. The boss under Spellbind is a joke, we can tank him with ecstatic frenzy on without taking damage. The problem is he summons veil kings which are perpetually resurrecting themselves and run at nearly the same speed as you (!). With that being said, the way to do this boss is to lure him to the corridor just outside of his chamber. Afterwards go to town, summon all minions you have and go back, Spellbind him and Barrage him to death. His veil kings will get stuck behind him and will not be able to attack you. Then pick up the mana belt and get the hell out of there.

Second StageBeware fast moving Shadow skeleton mobs, who will poison you on hit. A second hit is fatal.

Andariel: equip more open wounds – either a Ripstar ring or Featherclaw TU6 chain gloves. Kite her with Spellbind and Barrage. Once she gets low she will start to flee. Be sure to namelock her, hold your position and spam Phalanxes to finish her.

Third StageIron golems cast lifeblood when damaged, making them virtually impossible to kill. Best is to kite them back into the labyrinth and lose them.

Polar Worms are harmless on their own but beware their on death summons. Kill them with Phalanx by taking cover around a corner.

Diablo: Move around the edges of the boss room first, and lure the Chimaera one by one to the entrance. There Spellbind and kill them. Their trinity beam and on death nova are lethal, so take cover in the corridors outside the boss room when they die.

Next lure the boss to the corridors outside of his chamber. There spawn fire elementals, which being immune to fire can tank him indefinitely. Then wait for the right moment, go in behind him Spellbind and kill with Barrage.

Fourth StageWyrmshot really shines here as it can kill mobs you don’t even know are there – and there will be plenty of these. Swamp lizards are incredibly annoying with their physical and magical immunities and high defence. They only come in pairs however so keep them under Spellbind, position your back to a wall and kill them with Barrage while chugging pots.

Duriel: is easier for us than Mephisto. Simply keep him under Spellbind and kill him with Barrage as he chases you in futility.

Final StageStack at least 90 fire resist, so you will not have troubles with the trash here.

Baal: a gear check. Since he is immune to all damage apart from physical be sure to keep him under Spellbind at all times. Fight him at the centre of the room so you get hit by the least fortress towers as possible. Then you have three options on how to do the fight. Either do him in endgame gear, when you have enough damage to bust him down before he can kill you; or have a tanky minion to keep Baal busy while you Barrage him. The third option is to dps him until you are nearly dead and then start kiting until potions regen your hp. Note that he has extremely high avoid so any attempts of kiting him, need to be supplemented with 100% chance to open wounds from gear and at least 100k AR, otherwise he will regenerate his life.

Valthek: After you have collected the full boss set (Brotherhood of the Vizjerei) and the full mini-boss set (Brotherhood of the Horadrim) you are ready to equip all items and face the final boss of the Yshari Sanctum. Note that this may require more than a single run of the instance. As for the boss, use your Arcane Blast ability to clear trash, and holy bolt to damage Valthek when he blinks on you. Valthek himself has two abilities – the first a fire nova which does no damage as long as you are far from its origin so keep mobile. The second ability is a multi-directional lightning bolt, which one shots you. Therefore keep moving and clearing godsman guards, holy bolt the boss when he ports on you and move to avoid lightning bolts, while drinking a pot to regen from the fire damage.

33. VIZJUN: There are two ways of doing this uber. The brute force and the rush method. Before attempting this, go to the dungeon on Normal, and familiarise yourself with the positioning of the boss, the types of enemies and practice avoiding the mines and the beacon strikes. Once you are confident with the above, it is time to do it on Destruction.

In order to brute force it you must have a Tier 1 bow, and several End game pieces, coupled with plenty of reanimates and sustain. Proceed at a steady pace, covering everywhere you go with Phalanx waves. If monsters get too close spam a few Barrages and then back to covering the ground with Phalanxes. Do not tarry too long at any one spot as you are at risk of dying from mine spawns, or from robots being deployed on your head. The last section of the level, before the MCS will give you the most troubles as it takes a while to efficiently lay down Phalanxes. Use Wyrmshot and Barrage here mostly. Once you get to the boss, purify it grab the schematics and leave the game.

The rush method is easier to pull off if you do not have the necessary gear to brute force but it requires some practice in dodging mobs and avoiding high map densities as we do not have a short timered teleport. For the gear, see the above section on Kingdom of Shadow and use the same setup. Except instead of socketing for poison resist do so for fire. Use jewels with flat life and/or %Vit and/or FHR. Then respec your stats, putting enough strength and dexterity to wear gear, and the rest into vitality. Use the same skill build given in that uber as well.

This way with the TA trophy you will reach 40% DR and should ideally have around 800k defence with takedown. Practice the run on Terror first. When you are able to do it in two successive attempts including purifying the MCS then you are ready for Destruction. Note that sometimes the map will have a very high mob density so it may still take you some attempts even when you have mastered the route and dodging the robots.

34. STARTLED WITCH: Gear required for this uber is at least 70% magic resistance, 100% Open wounds, at least 100k AR and as close to 50% slow target as possible. To achieve the magic resist you need either SU Heavy boots or SU Diadem and craft TU Bone Shield, MO with damage reduced and vitality. Any more magic resistance you can obtain from other sacred uniques is a nice bonus. To get 100% Open wounds, use the Ripstar ring. For our weapon make the Void runeword (LO rune) in a sceptre, and MO it with 15 %AR MOs. This weapon combined with our triune charm will give us 43% slow target.

In terms of skills, smaxing Paragon is mandatory. If you wish to go full tryhard mode then instead of being in bow spec, respec to Blood and smax Bacchanalia for the extra maximum life.

Go to the Nexus Bridge and seek out the witch… When you get to the World Nexus, scout out the four crossroads and the number of Witches present on them. You need a clean crossroad with the entrances to it being free of them too. If all of them are occupied, then remake the game until you find one that meets the criteria.

After you have found a suitable arena, it is time to go to the centre of the Nexus and wake up the Startled Witch. She has four main abilities: a red force wall which does no damage but pushes you back should you walk through it; green projectiles fired at you from a distance which deal heavy magic damage; a magic damage multihitting nova she casts if you are in melee range which instakills you if you don’t move away; and finally she can pounce you when you are too far away or when you damage her with a purify.

The strategy is simple but the execution is tricky. Keep yourself buffed with War Spirit, which will keep her slowed and wounded. Then run around the crossroad, trying to minimise contact with the red force fields (especially important online, as these desynch you like hell) and purify her on cooldown. When she pounces on you make sure to get away as fast as possible to avoid death. If you run out of potions you have time to go to town and shop as she will not regenerate. Make sure to instantly TP when you come back as she may pounce you. A useful tip is to keep a gold pile on the ground next to Ormus, so that you can purchase potions without running out of gold following multiple deaths. Note that the fight takes a while as she has high hp.

With regards to the charm, and what trophy to cube it with – it all depends on your current and endgame setup you are aiming for. Use it to shore up your weaknesses.

35. ATHULUA: Unfortunately the rewards from this boss are meaningless to us as we do not need Athulua's Blessing, because we already have sufficient attack rating, and we are not going to use Valkayrie's Prime. So in practice there is no reason to ever kill Athulua. If you wish to do it for purely academic purposes (besides it's a fun fight) read on.

The first thing you need is a source of slow target. Most likely you will have to craft a sacred bow with slow target and decent damage. This way with the Triune charm we will be at around 40% slow target. Socket it with perfect Amethysts, because you are going to be needing the attack rating. Secondly, and more importantly, you need plenty of damage reduction. The minimum is 25%, and this is how much I used when I killed her. However if you own endgame gear and can reach 40%+ this will make your job a lot easier and faster, because you will save a lot of time on doing corpse runs. Thankfully body recovery is easy here so if you have time it does not matter.

► Athulua Bow

Craft with an Abandoned shrine and bless with either an Abandoned or a Weird one when you hit a good roll.

Skill build is: smax Dragonlore, smax Ecstatic Frenzy, smax Paragon, 15 points Phalanx, 15 points Defensive Harmony, 10 points Wild and Free, leftovers in Barrage, 1pt all else. Regarding your stats, put around 100 points into dexterity for attack rating and everything else in vitality. I had 20k hp when I did her. Note that the reason we put 10 points in Wild and Free is because when Athulua is slowed we can leave her pounce radius and essentially "break off" the fight in order to go to town to restock on pots, heal up, clear rats etc.

She has four main abilities. She casts tantrum when you are in her melee range. Secondly, she can blink on top of you, leaving a wide circle around the location that deals damage over time and summons rats which have Tremor on death. Thirdly she has guided arrows which deal no damage but stun you for a long duration. Finally she has some sort of star encrusted arrow shot which does 4k damage with 25% PDR.

The challenge in this fight comes from keeping on the move so that you do not take much damage from her Tantrum and "Wind circle" abilities and not being in close proximity to rats when they die from our Barrage. This is really easy with our high movement speed provided that we do not get hit by the stunning arrows. If you do get hit then you get permastunned inside her kill zone and will die. Here is where more DR up to the cap helps as it allows you to recover if you make a mistake rather than outright die.

Because these stunning arrows are also guided, and chase you for extremely long periods of time, the way to neutralise them is by taking cover around the four stone statues in the arena. Take a look at the screenshot below explaining the kiting route.

► Athulua route

The blue circles are the locations of the statues. The general gist of it is that you run in a wide circle around the arena until there are many guided arrows chasing you. Then you lose Athulua, by outrunning her, and do a loop around the next statue in your way so the guided arrows dissipate there. Then if you have done a full lap you can go in the other direction for a bit to clear residual rats before aggroing the boss again.

36. ASTROGHA: Gear requirement here is simple: your highest damage gear set but replace your jewellery as follows. Rare rolled rings with +1 all skills & at least -15% efr and a rare amulet with at least +2 all skills -25% efr. MO these with -15% efr each. You need to reach at least 170% fire pierce. The best bows to use here are runewords, because they can reach the highest base damage possible. Procs do not matter – so make a Typhaon, Manta or Caecilia if you do not own a high physical damage bow.

For stats go full dexterity as usual. Skill build is smax Dragonlore & Ecstatic Frenzy, 15 points in Defensive Harmony, 28 points in Sun Strike, 10 points in Spellbind, left overs in Paragon and 1pt in everything else. Do not put anything into War Spirit – crushing blow is useless against Astrogha and the spike novas kill statues you do not want killed.

The boss has only two abilities. He summons statues which belch out Darklings at a fast rate and disintegrate on their own after some seconds. These statues must not be touched by you because when killed they set your maximum hp to 1 and this leads to your death. He also casts a lethal Frozen Orb if there is an enemy in his melee range.

To kill him we need to take care of two things. Firstly we need the high fire pierce and base damage to ensure that we can kill him in one, or at most two, resistance drops. When I did it my Sun Strike was at 61k – 122k. Secondly we need some way to survive the onslaught of the Darklings while we position ourselves to hit Astrogha without breaking statues. To that extent keep 10 fire elementals with you (but no more as the boss teleports when struck and more summons increases the chance he will shoot an Orb and wipe you). They will tank the little maggots for you and keep them slowed. You should also use Spellbind on them to make them even more harmless. From here simply position yourself such that you can fire off Sun Strikes at the boss, without your arrows killing statues on the way. Reposition and resummon elementals if necessary when he blinks.

To make this as easy as possible, make sure to only summon Astrogha in long, dead-end, corridors where he cannot escape to small side sections of the Mausoleum and jam them full of Darklings. Examples of these are marked with blue in the bellow screenshot. Farm yourself at least a 400+ hp charm.

The first level of the Maggot Lair contains untargetable Ghost Worms and eggs, which block your path and spawn more creepy crawlies when killed. Keep yourself buffed with Takedown and eat an apple. Traverse the level by killing eggs with Takedown / blinking over them with Jitan’s gate. Due to your high defence you will not be hit very often – I had 860k when I did it and this renders the worms mostly harmless in small numbers. The next level is the Maggot Depths. It features less of the unkillable bugs and some killable ones. Simply treat it the same way as the above and rush to the exit.

The first challenging part of this uber begins once you reach the Wretched Hive. Your task here is to locate Brachyceran – you will know when you reach him by the fire on the ground preceding his room. Keep yourself buffed with Takedown, and use Pounce to traverse the level until you find the boss room. Then use Great Hunt and Pounce to clear out Snakes / Young Sand Worms and Sand Maggots around there. Basically the idea is that you great hunt while buffed with Takedown at the sand maggots, then when you start to get low you chug a potion and start pouncing around the room, which makes you dodge all punishers and small maggot hits, so you regen. Then you go back to finish off the big one you had attacked before and rinse and repeat until they are all dead. Keep using Spellbind also - it makes crushing blow via War Spirit more effective.

If you wish to speed up the process (although unnecessary), feel free to use any good SU spear or make the Evanescence runeword. Bear in mind that there are Sand Maggots near Brachy himself, so make sure to clear them out as otherwise they will keep spawning nasties.

Afterwards you need to clear a reasonably wide section around his chamber from Ghost Worms. In order to do this we must lure them away. Because they do not move, but rather blink to your position this is only possible via leading packs of them into twisted passages and then using Jitan’s gate to teleport out of their line of sight.

Brachyceran:Once you have most Ghost Worms lured, respec to your Bowazon set. Keep the honorific gloves you crafted and use the Astrogha jewellery to reach 170% fire pierce. Replace enough gems to also achieve 95 fire resist. For stats go full dex. The skill build is the same we used for Astrogha, but we do not need the points in Spellbind, because we will be using Edyrems, so feel free to smax Sun Strike and Paragon and put 1pt in War Spirit.

When you get to actually fight the boss without throngs of maggots gnawing at your feet you will realise he is rather easy. He has four abilities. Firstly he casts Lorenado, which does no damage to us thanks to our stacked poison resist. Then he has a fire Punisher Nova and a fire Keg Throw which deal no damage to us thanks to our stacked fire resist. Lastly every 5 seconds when in his sight range he will morph you into a maggot, which sets your fire resistance to -100 and there is nothing you can do about it. During this period of time prolonged exposure to his fire spells will lead to your death.

To begin with go to town and summon 10 Edyrems, which will distract the remaining Ghost Worms. Do not use fire elementals for this part as they move around a lot and may attract more bugs. Then go back to the Wretched Hive and inch towards the boss. He will polymorph you. During this time, be sure to take cover from his fire spells and resummon fallen Edyrem. Once the morph expires, move in vision of Brachyceran. Keep him pinned down in his room and shoot Sun Strikes at him for around 4 seconds. Then fall back out of his sight range as the next polymorph is incoming. Repeat this process until he is dead. This may be rather quick or slower depending on the random additional resistances he spawns with. If at any point you are left with no alive Edyrems, go to town to resummon and use this opportunity to restock on potions.

The charm itself is rather mediocre so hopefully you will get your +1 to Amazon skills on the first try, unlike me. Make sure to stash the other reagents as we will need them for later.

► Brachy

QQ

38. ULDYSSIAN: For this uber we require as close to 50% slow target as possible, so if you do not own a SU bow with that attribute, craft yourself the Void runeword. Double MO and lucky, MO up to 350% ED. Put the runeword in, socketing with 2% LL & 2% dex / 1% AA as usual, then orb with 15x +10 maximum damage MOs and the remaining space with life leech. We will also require 100% open wounds for the last memory and for Uldyssian himself, likely from our trusty Ripstar. I also recommend having at least 150k AR, which will give us comfortable hit chances on all mobs in the dungeon. Gear I used when I did it was the midgame set (see Option II in the gear section), but I replaced my Typhaon with the below Void.

► Uldy bow

Memories: You must defeat 30 mini bosses before facing Uldyssian in battle. Kite with Barrage and Spellbind all who are not mentioned. A good idea is to spawn a single fire elemental before you enter the new arena which gives you time to Spellbind the mini boss and start kiting more comfortably.

► Memories

3. Lurker: as you enter the portal stay close to the wall and move slightly left to dodge his spine attack. Offscreen him with Phalanx.

5. Invisible corpse eaters: fill room with phalanxes. As soon as you see fire projectiles, go back through teleport pad to previous area.

10. Spire: run to the middle of the room, spam Barrage. Wait for it to teleport back to you.

12. Death projector: as you enter the teleport pad target it and quickly cast Phalanx. Go back through the pad and wait a few seconds during which it will die.

14. Gargoyle statue: same strat as the death projector above, but it requires 2-3 Phalanxes instead of one.

18. Obsidian Lord: this guy is faster than a racing car. Summon many elementals that will tank him, spellbind him and kill from a distance with Phalanx.

21. Vizier: no need to attack this guy. Spellbind him as you enter. The souls will kill him for you, just keep your distance and keep refreshing it.

22. Arihan: eat an apple and chug pots on cooldown. Spam phalanx on his head from a distance. If you get too low go back to previous arena to regen.

23. Fire edyrem: spawn some elementals to tank him. As you enter run up to him and instantly Spellbind. Then kill with Barrage.

24. Lightning Edyrem: as you enter run to the opposite side of the room, in the top right corner. Keep your distance from the boss so he does not spam his damaging lightning bolts. Then cast Phalanxes which will knock him back to the opposite side of the arena. Offscreen in this fashion until he is dead.

25. Cold Edyrem: same as above but more damaging and more hp.

26. Andariel: keep her under Spellbind and kite with Barrage. Take cover behind pillars to dissipate her black bolts and make sure to dodge her frozen sphere.

27. Duriel: the ultimate kite, Spellbind & Barrage boss. Make sure you can keep the routine up for a few minutes as his heroic shield and high hp prolong the fight.

28. Mephisto: summon fire elementals to distract him for a few seconds so you can get him slowed. Then keep him offscreen and spam Phalanxes. Take cover from his skills behind pillars. Eventually his AI will roll a melee attack and he will keep following you unless you line of sight him or he manages to hit you. Kite with Spellbind and Barrage for the kill.

29. Diablo: as is the case in the Yshari Sanctum, your fire elementals can tank him indefinitely. Once he is preoccupied with them sufficiently, position yourself at the rear keep Spellbind up and Barrage to death.

30. Baal: equip your Ripstar ring in order to achieve 100% OW. Same tactic as Mephisto, except that when Baal gets low he may decide to flee. Follow him, stay between the avalanches and finish off with Phalanx. As long as you do not die from his avalanches he will go down as we have a very high attack rating which allows us to easily keep him wounded.

Uldyssian: Skill build is Smax Dragonlore, Paragon, War spirit. 15 points in defensive harmony, leave only 1pt in Ecstatic Frenzy in order to reach our attack animation cap and transfer its points into Barrage (for more arrows).

When you enter Uldyssian will be at the centre platform. Position yourself at the edge of the abyss, to the right of the bridge, where no Edyrems can obstruct your purifies from hitting. If you die, or go to town for any reason, Uldyssian will use this opportunity to move around. If this is the case then make sure to always stand to his south at a 15 degrees angle to the left or right of the boss, which will prevent you from being hit by his deathstrike.

After you have positioned yourself spam Barrage and purify on cooldown. The boss has extremely high hp so the higher uptime on open wounds and the more purifies you land the less time it will take. If your purify is off cooldown, but the boss is spawning minions, I advise playing it safe and waiting until most / all are cleared before purifying in order to minimise risk. Sometimes there will be one or two Edyrems who somehow manage to get their sacred armour on. If that happens and they are the only ones left (so you cannot keep your hp topped up with life leech) drink a potion to be safe. Make sure not to forget to weapon switch and maintain your buffs. Hopefully you will get a high rolled charm.

39. ZORUN TZIN: Gear required here is the same bow we crafted for Athulua, with decent damage and slow target, and as much damage reduction that we can get our hands on. I used the Truce belt to replace my Deadfall here and did it with 31% DR.

Skill build is smax Ecstatic Frenzy, Dragonlore, Barrage and Paragon. 15pts Defensive harmony. Other skills at 1 and leftovers in War Spirit. You don’t need Wyrmshot or Phalanx when fighting Zorun.

The boss has three main abilities. When at range he can blink on you, casting a 6 directional instakill spell when he arrives, which has a safe zone in his melee range. He also has a spine spell which does no damage but summons untargetable, high physical damage dealing ratfinks. Lastly he can summon statues which grant him invulnerability in a big radius (at least a full screen away). These are immune to all themselves and can only be killed by being purified.

Strategy:Take a look at the below screenshot, explaining the kiting route in the Hidden Fortress. Zorun himself is rather easy because as you can see from his abilities. His only high damaging attack is easily dodged by staying still for half a second when he blinks on you.

► Zorun Route

The biggest challenge here for us, because we cannot one shot the boss as a caster, will be to manage the ever increasing ratfink numbers and to a lesser extent the statues while we damage the boss. The yellow circles in the screenshot are your two designated rat herding pens. After you kill Terul, make sure to traverse the entire level clearing it of Goliaths and herding all rats into the right side pen. Keep your TP at the green circle, in case you need to recover your body.

Then go to the red circle, summon Zorun and run away. You will be kiting the boss around the blue circle, while keeping some Edyrems around you to tank some ratfink hits and give you more time to dps the boss. This is why slow target is important here as it gives you more time before the boss spawns ratfinks or statues.

Every time the boss blinks on you stay in his melee range and spam Barrage until you see a statue. Then run a full screen away. Here you have to take a second to notice if there are already more than 1-2 ratfinks spawned. If there are not, then summon some more Edyrems, spam Barrage and wait for boss to blink on you. If there are already several rats then do not stop, but rather keep running and lure them into the pen that is opposite the boss. That is, if the boss is on the left side of the blue circle lure the rats into the right side pen and vice versa. After rats are lured use Jitan's Gate to get back to the kiting route and slowly approach Zorun to renew the fight.

Keep doing this process until you are about to complete a full circle. When that is the case lose the boss by outrunning him and then retrace your steps to purify the statues. The ratfinks themselves see you from a further range than the boss, so this will allow you at all times to herd them in the yellow sections and keep the kiting route free of them. Then it’s only a matter of time and luck on how long the fight takes.

40. BROTHER LAZ:

Gear check: This is a purify boss, therefore we will require a dedicated gear set with an emphasis on defensive attributes. The stat caps you should aim to reach with this set are the following.

Firstly we need 100% OW so that we can reliably bleed the boss after a purify hit. This is achieved with the Butcher's tooth and the Ripstar ring.

Secondly we require 50% slow target. This will greatly increase the time we have to purify & hit Laz and as such is necessary for our survival. You will need to collect a Sacred War Sceptre base item, because it is the only sceptre with a -10 WSM modifier. Then use Abandoned or Ornate shrines to craft an item which has at least 27% slow target, no on kill/striking/attack damage procs and hopefully some useful mods such as: CtC Rapture, % AR, % Dex, % Vit, Lightning spell damage, - ELR. Note that because sceptres spawn with both caster and WDM modifiers this may take many tries to accomplish. Therefore if you run out of shrines go to Terror/Destruction Fauzt, collect all shrines that drop and then use them to craft this weapon. MO it with attack speed afterwards. In addition we get 10% from our Triune charm.

For the last 10% we could use the TU6 Athulua's hand - The Sightless Eye. However I believe it is better to equip the TU6 Setzschild in this slot because of its incredible defensive stats and huge bonus to strength and dexterity to enable us to more easily cap our block.

Thirdly we need to reach our maximum speed breakpoints because this will give us more time to react during the fight. Those are 280% FBR, 174% FHR, 142% IAS and 68 or 120% FCR. To this extent we will be crafting sacred Greaves/Gauntlets/Crown or Spangenhelm with Abandoned shrines and using MOs to help us reach these stats. Do not forget to bless all your crafts with abandoned shrines afterwards, because you will need the dexterity. To make this part easier you should keep all decently rolled speed cycles, which drop while you farm the Triune.

Fourthly we must stack as much defensive attributes as possible. This means looking for high %ED on your shrinecrafted armour, socketing your chest piece with Perfect Skulls and MOing any leftover space, after breakpoints are hit, with % TCD. We will be using Paragon, so filling as many sockets as possible with perfect gems will solve our HP needs. This will allow us to put all stat points in dexterity in order to reach as close to 75% block as possible. All physical damage reduction is also welcome, because it will give you a bigger margin for error. To that extent I recommend using a Sacred Unique chest with at least 10% DR, high defence and no unwanted procs.

Finally we need to make sure that there are no on attack/striking/death procs that do damage on our gear at all. The reasons for this will be explained in the enemies section. On kill procs however are fine, because they are not triggered by Stormcall or meleeing Laz, which allows us to use the awesome TU shield. Some of our charms have undesired procs themselves - the Crystalline Flame Medallion, Kabraxis' Soul, Cold Fusion Schematics and the upgraded Idol of Vanity. However going back to the Cathedral and obtaining a non-upgraded one is fine and very helpful as the 15% all speeds allows us to more easily reach the target breakpoints.

Below is my full gear set and also all the socket fillers. The majority of it is crafted, with perhaps the only hard to obtain item being Der Nebelring. My defensive stats when I did the fight were 340k defence, 75% block, 19k hp, 81% uninterruptable attack and 42% DR.

► Laz gear

Stats & Skills:Enough strength in order to equip your gear and everything else in dexterity for blocking. The skill build is smax Asterism, Balance and Paragon. 24 points in Wild and Free, 15 points in Defensive Harmony, 1pt in Spellbind and left overs in Stormcall. Do not put anything into Magnetic Field and War Spirit.

The high amount of points invested in Wild and Free give us 100% velocity bonus which will make dodging Laz' abilities much easier. We will use Stormcall to clear Groupies and Totems. As for the boss himself, I suggest binding your default melee attack on the left skill button and Purify from Uldyssian's Sword on the right. Occasionally when running from Laz you will use Spellbind to slow Groupies down.

Enemies:Groupies: These are summoned initially with Laz and also every time he blinks on you. As soon as they see you they will throw a dagger which does tri-elemental damage. This is easy to dodge, but in case you get hit we have capped resists so it's not too bad. Afterwards they will attempt to approach and melee you. Thankfully they are slow so are easy to outrun. If there are Groupies between you and Laz and he is about to teleport on you, make sure to Spellbind them so they do not cause you trouble. This will also save you running back more and taking up more space of the level (more on this below).

Black Hand Totems: These are occasionally summoned by Brother Laz when you are in medium range of him. The totems cast tremor when you get close (about half a screen away), which will leave you with barely any hp. Most importantly however these totems have almost no life themselves, so any attack will kill them. You should do your best to avoid destroying them, while you fight the boss, because they debuff you on death in the same way that Astrogha's statues do and they also heal the boss if he is near. This is the reason why we have removed all our procs. We do not want them triggering during the fight and accidentally killing a totem, which will lead to our death and may heal Laz.

Brother Laz: He has several abilities. Firstly he can pounce on you (he "sees" you from very far away), which triggers off a physical damage Retaliate nova and spawns Groupies. Secondly he can spawn Black Hand Totems as described above. Thirdly he targets you with Singularity when close and Deathstrike when far away.

Needless to say both Singularity and Deathstrike are lethal, so do your best to move when you see them under your feet. The most important thing you will learn when you begin to practice this uber is not to panic. Panic is understandable here because the boss' AI will target you from a long range, so you are always under fire. But at the same time it is crucial to control the adrenaline and move just enough to dodge the Deathstrike, having the presence of mind to Spellbind Groupies and using all empty available space of the level as you kite.

The Execution:First step is to respec, equip your gear and then make your way to the Proving grounds. Stormcall does both lightning and physical damage and Asterism gives us -50% ELR on its own, so killing enemies with this skill alone is easy. Spellbind lightning immune enemies to lower their physical resistance as usual. When you get to the grounds, kill the Death projector using Hammer of Zerae. Then lure all mechanics to the bottom left corner of the level - the room marked with a green circle in the below screenshot.

Then open a town portal in the room directly above, near the yellow circle on the screenshot. Next go to the red circle and summon the boss. As soon as you do run to point B. Prepare yourself and slowly start inching back towards the room where you summoned. Brother Laz will then blink on you. Now here is something important to remember. Every time you begin the fight, or after a death, the first time Laz pounces you your only task is to land a melee attack on him - do not even think about Purifying him until he is hit and slowed. Note that because he has around 50% avoid not every attack you make will connect. Therefore I recommend that you play with sound ON for this boss, because you can clearly hear the distinct "whack" when your attack lands. Unfortunately as an Amazon, our fastest attack animation caps out at 7 frames. So at this stage, when you are just trying to get Laz slowed you can only afford to attack the boss twice before you have to retreat.

Okay now that you managed to hit Laz, you will kite him along the blue route (direction B-C-D-E-F). From this point onwards once you got him slowed the basic mechanics of the fight boil down to: purify, hit, run, dodge deathstrikes & singularities, repeat. So basically every time he blinks on you, you shoot a purify, then you attack him, then kite. On paper this sounds easy, but in reality this requires a lot of practice and timing to execute well with our slow animation and especially if playing on realm.

Once you approach point E along the route, your task between points E and F will be to lose the boss. If you have him properly slowed this should not be hard with our fast running speed. After this is accomplished, move to point B and retrace your steps along the route in order to clear out all Groupies & Totems that were spawned during the kite. Stormcall really shines here as it allows you to keep Groupies in hit recovery and kill Totems from far away so they do not cast tremor and kill us while we are under the deadly debuff. To make this go faster, feel free to make the Yul Runeword staff MOd with lightning spell damage and keep it in your cube until you need it for this part.

As you get closer and closer to the point where Laz last blinked on you get ready to repeat the above process, but this time reversing the route going in direction F-E-D-C-B. Remember that every time we begin the fight our only job after the first pounce is to get the boss hit and slowed. Only worry about purifying afterwards. With more and more practice you can modify your route to include more and more of the level. With sufficient practice it is possible to reduce Laz's hp by 50% per lap, requiring only 2 routes to kill him. However on your first kill you will likely require a lot more with many deaths in the process - this is normal. My best performance on the first kill was 1/3 of Laz's hp without dying.

► Laz route

Corpse Recovery: So you managed to kite Laz for a bit and hopefully land some purifies and maintain OW during this time. If you get killed by the boss he will likely camp your corpse, so now the task becomes recovering our items while being careful not to kill any totems in the process. In order to do this we must lure Laz at least 1.5 blinks away from our body. So as you enter the TP, approach from the side of the route which is clean of Groupies and Totems until you get blinked on and die. Repeat this once more if necessary. Then go along the other side of the route and clear Groupies & Totems with Stormcall (using your Yul Staff from the cube) until you recover your body. Then clear out the remaining trash and inch towards the boss to renew the fight.

41. THE VOID: Not attempted yet.

42. MARCONECROX: Not attempted yet.

EndgameGear

There are many options when it comes to picking sacred uniques for the ultimate gear set. I will simply list the best options without much details, because if you have this gear already then you should know what stats you are looking for.

WEAPON: A perfect rolled Dear Esther is by far the best choice but incredibly hard to come by. Second best option is the Horned Hunter, or the Chasmstriker.

QUIVER:Arrowsider is the top pick here. Second best is the Bag of Tricks. Honorary mention to a lotteried Locust Hive for farming.

HELM: A difficult choice between Asgardsreia and Rainbow Maiden. The Spangenhelm gives more damage overall and good meat shields from Resurrect, whilst the Cerveillere gives better defensive stats and decent damage. If you can easily obtain 100% elemental pierce from your other gear and everything else you own is endgame quality then pick the Maiden because you will be one shotting everything anyway and the defensive stats are more valuable when that is the case.

BODY ARMOUR: Many viable options for this slot. Best is Segnitia. The runeword Natasha's Legacy and the Warrior's Robe are also good (however the bonus to EF is capped at 3) and Hratli's Craft is a nice option for farming. Honorary mention to the TU Albrecht's Revenge, which gives good damage thanks to the arrow proc, but lacks in defensive stats.

GLOVES: Best options are Gulag's Frenzy and the Demonic Touch (use a strength trader's chest if you can't equip them or farm better rolled stats charms). Centuria Insectorum are also decent but worse than the other two.

BELT:Black Void is probably best. Other good options are Dementia, Champion of the Triune or Lillith's Temptation for farming.

BOOTS: Head and shoulders above the rest are the Knight's Grace. Second best are Titan's Steps.

AMULET:Dyer's Eve is my necklace of choice. Beads of the Snake Queen are also nice. A well rolled rare with over 3 skills, Lightning Arena, Doom and HP is the best.

RINGS:Bad Mood for a more offensive option. A "defensive" choice would be Ballantine's 1827.

Appendix

A1:Guide to Making an endgame weapon runeword

The best bows to use are sacred Reflex bows, Long War bows and Stag bows in that order. Because of ecstatic frenzy we easily reach our maximum attack speed animation even with the slowest bows. Therefore going for the highest possible base damage is a priority. The reason a Reflex bow is better than a Long War bow, even though it has slightly lower base damage, is because it gives a 50% higher dexterity weapon damage bonus.

First step is to erase all modifiers from your bow, and make it into a base item type if it was dropped as magic or rare for example. To do this put these items in the cube and transmute: Bow + Catalyst of Destruction + any rune -> Base version of bow + Catalyst.

Now transmute your bow with an Oil of Enhancement two times to make it superior.

A. Next you will keep cubing it with oils of renewal, until it matches one of the following conditions:- It has 50% + Enhanced damage and either none or 6 sockets- It has a 45%+ Enhanced damage and 80%+ Attack rating bonus and either none or 6 sockets (prior to having hard charms)

Once one of the above is met, cube the weapon with a Luck Trial mystic orb. If the resulting item has added green text “Double mystic orb bonus”, then proceed to the next step (B). If not cube with an oil of renewal and go back to step A. Note that if the item has no sockets you can punch 6 holes in by using the Larzuk quest reward (once per difficulty) or cubing the bow with any 6 jewels.

B. Now that the base item is crafted, you need to lucky upgrade it. Go kill Griswald on Terror difficulty to obtain his Special Box. Cube the special box with an oil of Luck to get an Oil of Blessed Luck. Now cube your bow with this new oil and hope that it adds both Enhanced Damage and a bonus to attack rating. Only the enhanced damage bonus is mandatory, but if you are a perfectionist with free time you can reroll with an oil of renewal and go back to step (A) if you want a shot at both bonuses.

C. Next you need 5 jewels with which to fill in the remaining sockets. We will be crafting only bows with a high physical damage, so you need to craft jewels with a Ber rune with the following recipe:

The more you roll a single jewel the lower its affix level becomes, meaning that eventually it will spawn mods in lower affix brackets and will have less mods. Therefore only roll a single jewel 6 times at most if you wish to get 5 properties on it, before changing it with a fresh one. If however you only care about the required properties and only one desirable property, then you can roll the same jewel 13 times.

Try to craft a jewels with both required properties and at least one desirable property. Then cube them with an Oil of Luck before placing them in your bow.

Now we are ready to make our runeword. Put the jewels in followed by the rune. If the rolls on the variable modifiers are not high enough you can unsocket the bow by cubing it with 3 perfect gems and an Oil of Disjunction.

5* Early game set + Typhaon bow, Akarat’s trek, bowazon set gloves, hanabigami, assur’s bane. Used for uber 25.

6* Typhaon, Asgardsreia helm, Akarat’s trek, bowazon set gloves, hanabigami, assur’s bane rest are from the early game set. Used for 26 - 30.

Same set as above for Vizjun, but I crafted the gloves in the midgame gear section to replace the set gloves.

For Athulua I used the crafted bow shown there, the Truce belt and the rest was the gear from the midgame section.

On Astrogha I used the gear shown in the midgame section and crafted jewellery as described in his tutorial.

Brachy - still midgame gear set, but borrowed crafted jewellery used for Astrogha.

A4 MECHANICS: In this guide I've repeatedly mentioned that the arrow proc of level 1 is the best WDM proc for our character. But why exactly level 1 and what the damage loss is, when using other arrow levels or javelins or knives ("projectiles") is explained below.

The preferred level of the arrow on striking proc is 1, because it is the most common and only stackable arrow proc, among viable items that our character can equip. It's present on the TU Chain Mail, Locust Hive, Bag of Tricks, SSU Reflex Bow, SSU Spangenhelm & Pantheon Set bow.

To illustrate how much damage you are losing by having mismatched arrow projectiles consider the following example. We are using the SSU Stag Bow and the SSU Spangenhelm. The bow has a 25% CtC lvl 10 arrow on striking and the helm has a 10% CtC lvl 1 arrow. Both among the best endgame equips. So what are the chances that upon striking an enemy we shoot off an additional projectile?

Both events can occur and they are mutually independent, so P(L10 U L1) = 0.25 + 0.1 - 0.25*0.1 = 32.5%. This is the probability that on every strike you get a lvl1 arrow or a lvl 10 arrow or two arrows. Now if instead the bow also had a lvl1 arrow proc the probability of getting a projectile would be 35%. So mixing the different projectiles nets you 7.69% less total arrows on striking.

The bigger your source of one projectile, the more damage you will lose by not matching the projectiles. If in the above example you also had Albrecht's revenge equipped as your chest armour (so you would have 20% arrow1 and 25% arrow10) the theoretical damage loss would increase to 12.5%.

So what does this mean in practice?TL:DR If using one of the items with a level 1 on striking arrow proc then try to equip some of the others because that way you'll get the best bang for your buck.

A consequence of this is that the highest theoretical WDM damage setup (ignoring defensive stats) for a bowazon without a godly Dear Esther must include Chasmstriker + Asgardsreia + Albrecht's Revenge + Locust Hive (gives more projectiles overall than bag of tricks in this case).

Credits

Brother Laz and MarcoNecroX for creating this awesome game.

Marco, Prestoned, Stoya and Metalistas for gear / uberquest ideas.

Marco and BassToMouth for layout inspiration from their great guides.

Quirinus and the rest of the DocsTeam™ for the documentation.

aahz, nomercy4you & ufoleet for maintaining TSW and Greg & Will for hosting servers for the muricans.

One thing bothers me though. The lvl of the arrow proc is actually irrelevant unless the game is coded in a way that prohibits multiple procs going off of one strike. What you are calculating is the prob that at least one arrow is procced. However that is not equal to the (average) number of arrow procs in 100 strikes, because the intersection of events (that is, both procs go off of one strike) should count double.

Also, just think logically about a 25% lvl10 arrow bow + 10% lvl1 arrow helm vs 35% lvl10 arrow bow. On average every 100 strikes, the first bow procs 25 and helm 10 = 35 arrows, exactly as much as the second bow.